


"I don't want your pity, I want your absence."

by inK_AddicTion



Category: Guardians of Childhood - Fandom, rise of the guardians
Genre: Character Death, F/F, Feral characters, Speech impediment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6710941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pitch has won, and the Guardians have long since split up. Darkness rules the land and every spirit is out for themselves, eking out belief wherever they can find it. The oldest spirits are rising again, and with them Mother Nature, who remembers when the Guardian of Memory was nothing but her little bird.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"I don't want your pity, I want your absence."

Punjam Hy Loo had been swallowed by the jungle. The ancient stones had been pulled down by generations of crawling vines sneaking into hidden cracks, and colourful flowers bloomed at the feet of Toothiana’s frozen ancestors, the Sisters of Flight that had been transformed to wood upon Tooth’s mother’s death. Elephants roamed the old courtyards once more, and the towering stacks of teeth were guarded by only spiders and a few fairies left of the thousands that had once been Tooth’s army.  
Pitch had won and plunged the world into a modern Dark Age. It had been easy to incite fear in the narrow minds of these people, and war-torn, bomb-struck lands had barely time for indulgent things like Christmas, or Easter, or little fairies that came in the night. The ancient spirits were rising again, dark spirits ruled over by the King of Nightmares, strongest of them all. For centuries, the Guardians had monopolised the pinnacle of belief, and now they were left to scrabble in the dirt with everyone else.  
They’d had to release themselves from their oath to stop themselves from fading away, and had split up to try and regain the fragments of their belief. Without Sandy, there had been no stopping Pitch, and without Jack, abandoned in an icy crevasse, there was no temper on Pitch’s rage. Three Guardians alone were no match for Pitch Black.  
Tooth had retreated to the heart of India, her birthplace. Her thin wings were too weak to support her in flight without belief to sustain the constant energy they burned, so she had become accustomed to walking again, hunting again, using her plumage to blend into the greens and blues of the jungle floor, her swords at her hips, and the few dozen fairies that had survived with her acting as her scouts and eyes in the sky.   
It was slow work, and thankless. Without the gift of flight, Tooth was only able to serve a single village at best a night, and so her ability to garner belief was incredibly limited. Her useless wings, once so praised for their beauty, were nothing more than weights on her back - Tooth could manage short hops and occasional hovers before she ran out of energy and fell. Never had Tooth missed the powerful feathery wings Mother Nature had gifted her with as a girl more than she did then, the great feathery pennons had not required even an ounce as much energy as the hummingbird style ones, though they were slower and more cumbersome. No longer a Guardian, Tooth wasn’t as shaped by belief, her form not as fluid, and was trapped in the soft, fluffy visage of a Tooth Fairy with its tiny feet and buzzing hummingbird wings in a world that was rapidly outgrowing it.  
She’d had to relearn an increased sensitivity to the other spirits, remembering how to watch out for the old ones, ones that had shaped the earth with their life-force long before Tooth had been born (once, the gentle Sandman had been counted in their number). She could hear their heartbeats thudding through the lazy strains of the earth long before she ever saw them. She didn’t know why they always came after her - well, that was a lie.   
It was for her memory.  
Every ancient spirit could barely remember in their origins, and expected Tooth to know. Every one of them wanted Tooth to document their rise to power once more in the vault of her memory. A memory that never failed or slipped was all but priceless in the spirit world, where minds withered and lost their pasts, just like Jack had, so easily.   
It always started the same way. A low thrumming in the burn of her core. Then her feathers prickling up, her wings rustling worriedly. Tooth’s head snapped up, and fear drenched her to the bone. An old one was coming.  
Her wings lifted, spreading out of instinct, the papery thin gossamer trembling in the breeze. The wind was growing stronger, and the leaves on the plants suddenly spread wider, birdsong screaming higher in a glorious cacophony. The world shuddered in desire and worship, and Tooth felt a thirsty throb burning through her veins, in every pound of her shaking heart. A jaguar bounded out of the shadows and straight past her, the glossy ebony coat rippling smoothly over pulling muscles. Tooth, frozen, whimpered.  
Primal instincts that Tooth had thought were long buried surged from beneath the surface, and before she knew what she was doing Tooth was lunging for a tree, her soft little hands and feet utterly useless in her attempts to climb it. Wildly, she looked around, tried to jump into the air. Her wings let her down, and she crashed into the undergrowth.  
Vines crept languidly over her feet like the old, familiar touch of a lover, and Tooth screamed. She drew out her swords and slashed at them until they let her go. She sprang to her feet and tried to run, but the wind sighed mockingly around her, trees reaching down spindly, twiggy fingers to comb through her crest.  
And then there came the butterflies. They fluttered from under flowers and behind rocks, poisonous eye-spots on their fragile wings, all with gleaming emerald eyes that flashed mockingly. A cloud, a storm, and Tooth could feel the rumble of thunder through her bones as the butterflies swarmed into a great wall between the trees, trapping her in a clearing.  
She stumbled back, but vines were twining longingly up her legs, immobilising her from the knees down. She hacked and slashed with her swords, but before she could do much damage a punishing gust of wind shoved her to her hands and knees, twisting her useless wings painfully. Instantly, vines crawled over Tooth’s wrists, holding her in the humiliating position. Her swords clattered down over the ground, and Tooth watched helplessly as more vines curled around the handles and whisked them into the thriving greenery.  
The butterflies were coming together, their wings meeting and crinkling brown at the edges. Scarred, earthen brown flesh formed where their wings met, and the vines of the trees reached down and throbbed black and green at the roots, becoming a storm of billowing black hair. Slowly, a familiar spirit took shape in the epicenter, a cruel and beautiful face that sent chills deep into Tooth’s core.  
Mother Nature, fully formed, dragged her fingers in a slow, sensuous slide from her bare thighs, over her stomach and ribs, exploring her own flesh, her breasts, scarred shoulders, the long length of her neck, her jaw and cheekbones, over her eyesockets. Finally, green eyes the colour of spring opened, and black lips exhaled the breath of the world.  
“Free,” Mother Nature breathed, linking her arms above her head and stretching, tall, lithe body rippling with powerful muscles coiled to spring. The animals of the jungle lurked at her heels, their song falling silent as their goddess and mother spoke.  
Tugging pointlessly against the thick vines, Tooth tried to cringe away, a jangling terror in her nerves. She was well aware that she was entirely at Seraphina’s capricious mercy like this.  
Seraphina, one hand ruffling absently through her thick, silky black hair, the other smoothing idly over her hip, tensed at the motion, every muscle in her body suddenly ridging out of her skin. Her head snapped down to regard Tooth, and expressionless, she watched her.  
“Seraphina,” said Tooth, very softly, “Seraphina, please-” She pulled helplessly on the vines, her wings spreading and tail lifting unhappily. “Let me go.”  
When Seraphina did speak, it was with the rumbling cadence of the earth mother in every word, rolling through the soil underneath Tooth’s hands and quivering in the vines that held her immobile. The world breathed in rapturous intensity under her command.   
“Thousands… of years,” said Seraphina. Her pauses were weighty and dragging. She spoke an ancient language that now only Tooth remembered, the language of Tooth’s childhood. “It has been… thousands… of years.” She stopped again, and sank into a slow, meditative silence, only rousing when Tooth pulled hard against the restraints again.  
“I have been… asleep,” said Seraphina, vaguely. She had often spoken like this, Tooth remembered, slow, deliberate, as if each word had caused her a great effort. Speaking in the language of humans had always left her sentences disjointed and slightly confused, a hint of a thick accent to her words.   
Some thousands of years ago, shortly after Tooth had become a Guardian, Mother Nature had disappeared from the world, enclosed herself into some secret haunt and slept away the ages, as powerful spirits were wont to do from time to time. The recent burst of power from suddenly-believing minds, desperate for any salvation, must have reawoken her.  
Tooth could only pray that Seraphina did not remember the events that had caused her to seek such an isolating and numb way of spending her immortal life, the closest thing to death a spirit could achieve. Their argument - Tooth fighting her off with the same swords the vines had taken, Tooth declaring that she was free of Mother Nature’s control, she was a Guardian now.   
Harsh words had been hurled between them; Tooth had been rebellious, seeking freedom from the overprotective and controlling wing that had suffocated her since shortly after Tooth had first gained her feathers and, unable to survive on her own, latched onto Seraphina like a little worshipful slave. Tooth had sworn that she loved Seraphina, once, and the memory of the fervour of those feelings came back to her now, and she felt a flush colour her cheeks. It was easy to remember desire with Seraphina’s body, beautiful and bare, stretching slowly before her.  
Seraphina stared at her. “You…” The accusation in the slow word was sudden and sharp. Tooth felt her cheeks flame. “You…. left… me…” The sentence trailed off, Seraphina apparently having forgotten where she wanted to take it. She frowned. It had been centuries since she’d last practiced speech, after all.  
Nonetheless, Tooth got the gist. “Yes,” she said, “I joined the Guardians.” She refused to feel guilty or hide from the past, and it was not in her nature to mislead with memory. “And… ah, left you.”  
“Guar-dians…” If Seraphina’s voice was slow, her movements were not. It seemed barely as if Tooth had blinked before Seraphina, impossibly fast, had crossed the clearing and sunk into a crouch in front of her, brilliant green eyes surveying her with her head cocked slightly. Her weathered fingers seized hold of Tooth’s chin in a bruising grip, turning her head this way and that.  
Powerless in Seraphina’s grasp, Tooth tried her best not to think about how Seraphina could crush her skull like an egg with very little effort.   
“Are not… are not… strong…” Seraphina muttered vaguely, and her hand strayed to a new scar over her midriff. Tooth gulped as those powerful eyes were turned back on her, the flame of her green irises impossible to escape, the lazy stare of an apex predator. Tooth had been the one to put that scar there, running Seraphina through with her sword and making her escape while Seraphina was distracted. “Was… Lunanoff. Moon… you… moon’s whore… rejected… my… gifts…”  
Anger was coming back to Seraphina now, her memory jogged enough. Her grip on Tooth’s chin tightened, and before she could stop herself, Tooth trilled in distress, her wings and tail flaring wide in an involuntary attempt to intimidate her attacker. She leant as far back as she could, wriggling embarrassingly in her bonds, before giving up and slumping, her forehead falling onto Seraphina’s scarred knee. Her nerves prickled with anxiety, but Tooth was helpless and she knew it. Nonetheless, she couldn’t stop herself from begging when Seraphina’s fingers ghosted along the edges of her wings.   
“Please, Seraphina, please, please don’t hurt me, don’t-” Tooth babbled, felt tears well up in her eyes. “I can’t… I won’t heal if you rip them off, I’m too weak, please, mercy!”  
Phantom pains were shooting in the bases of her wings and Tooth sobbed, reduced to senselessness in her fear. She shouldn’t have cared, since she was already groundless, but the threat of Seraphina taking her wings was still too horrifying to bear.  
Tooth heard Seraphina shift, and then the knee she was resting her head against pulled away as Seraphina sat cross-legged on the ground. The wild woman’s hands trailed over Tooth’s shoulders before one lightly took hold of her chin again and raised her head to look at her. Carefully, the forefinger of Seraphina’s other hand patted Tooth’s tears off her cheeks. Seraphina looked a little distressed behind her emotionless expression, her billowing hair flaring wildly.  
“…weak?” Seraphina queried, “I… I… not… will not…” Evident frustration creased Seraphina’s ancient face. “No… hurt,” she tried instead, peering hopefully at Tooth’s face to see if she understood.  
“Yes,” affirmed Tooth, weak-kneed with relief, “You’re not going to hurt me, oh thank the Mo- uh, thank… um, god.”   
“Hurt…?” asked Seraphina, again, and then her face abruptly darkened, became terrifying in its savagery. Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, and the creaking trees gathered close like compatriots to a murder. Somewhere, a venomous snake hissed. “I… kill… who hurt…you.”   
“No one hurt me,” Tooth hastened to say, and then paused, because technically, that wasn’t true. Pitch had hurt the Guardians, deeply, by taking away the source of their belief. He’d grounded Tooth, after all, and Tooth didn’t know if the others were even still alive anymore. But she didn’t know how Seraphina would react to that.   
“There was a great battle,” Tooth began tentatively, “Between the Guardians and Pitch Black. We’d found a new member, Jack Frost, and Pitch wanted to shroud the world in darkness, so he killed Sandy, and he incapacitated Jack, and then he made us back out of our oaths-”  
Seraphina stopped her with an angry snarl, shoving a finger against her lips. At first, Tooth thought it was a reaction to the events, but then she saw the frustrated confusion in her eyes. Seraphina couldn’t understand her when she spoke too quickly. Laboriously, Seraphina said, “…slow.”  
“Sorry,” said Tooth, and cleared her throat. Recounting the events left her with a dry lump in her throat. “The Guardians became very strong after you went to sleep,” she started, pausing a little until Seraphina nodded. “And eventually, we ended the Dark Ages and pushed back Pitch.”  
Seraphina’s eyes fell from hers, and a disconsolate wind rustled around the leaves. She said nothing, however, so Tooth carried on.  
“We had just found a new Guardian.” She paused, again, remembering. “His name was Jack Frost. Pitch was rising to power again, so we rose to fight him.”  
“Father… hurt?” Seraphina asked intently, framing Tooth’s face in both of her large hands. Sometimes, it was very easy to forget how tall Seraphina was, but not now, with her sitting straight-backed and cross-legged, still towering over Tooth with her roughened palms bigger than Tooth’s face. Tooth felt like a china doll in her powerful hold, but she sensed that Seraphina didn’t mean it to be threatening.   
“No, Pitch wasn’t hurt,” said Tooth, warily, not quite understanding who Seraphina meant. Seraphina jerked her head, and Tooth understood that she had meant Tooth, not Pitch. “Yes, I suppose you could say Pitch hurt us.”  
An angry scowl darkened Seraphina’s face again, but she listened attentively as Tooth went on. “He killed Sandy,” said Tooth, and there was still grief and tears in her voice. “He… shot him in the back.”  
Seraphina sat back, looking stunned. Then she pulled her knees to her chest and let out a low, animal groan of distress, hunching around herself. The vines around Tooth’s wrists and ankles suddenly let her loose and flowed to embrace their mother, curling round her in an attempt to comfort her. It began to rain, hard, raindrops pelting Tooth’s feathers and tearing holes in the leaves. The trees shook and groaned with despair.  
Tooth sat up and rubbed her wrists, wincing as the rain bombarded her thin, useless, sensitive wings. She watched Seraphina, a bundle of dark, earthen skin, scars and hair, a little warily, and deeply confused. Tooth admitted that she wasn’t quite sure how to deal with this version of Seraphina, not quite human, not quite anything, feral and uncivilised, violently emotive. She hadn’t seen Seraphina this… wild… since the day they met.  
It was clear that Seraphina hadn’t quite recovered from her long sleep. When they’d first met, Tooth had begun painstakingly teaching Seraphina how to speak and act around humans, and Seraphina had eventually gained a fluency and rhythm, although her words would ever remain strangely stressed, drawn-out or weighted in the wrong places. Tooth had gentled Seraphina, in some eyes, tamed her a little, companionship to temper the wildness that had driven Seraphina mad. In return, Seraphina had offered her the fruits of her planet, bringing her to water and teaching her how to hunt, what could be eaten and what could not, and giving her the gift of flight - and eventually, Seraphina’s body. Now, it was as if all her hard-work had been undone.  
Tooth had expected Seraphina to be angrier about their argument. But now it almost made sense that she was not - immersed as she had been for so long in the streams of her earth, such human concerns would seem distant and irrational. But nearly all creatures grieved for loved ones lost, and one needed no amount of civilisation to mourn.  
Before she knew what she was about, Tooth was crawling to Seraphina’s side, the way she had once done when she was young and begging for attention, eager to please without knowing how. She cuddled Seraphina’s long back, her smooth soft little hands patting Seraphina’s ribs, feeling them move up and down as she breathed. Her thin little wings could barely be felt, but Tooth draped them over Seraphina as best as she could anyway, nuzzling her crest of feathers into the storm of Seraphina’s wet hair. The rain washed them both, soaking Tooth’s feathers, and the biting chill of the wind quickly sank down to her bones.  
She began to shiver, and curled closer to Seraphina for warmth. “It’s okay,” she said, quietly, in Seraphina’s ear.   
“Should…” Seraphina’s voice was low and rumbling, vibrating through Tooth’s body as she huddled into her. “Should have stopped… kept… kept… strong.” She sounded shocked, still.  
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Tooth comfortingly, “You were asleep.” A wry little smile played about her lips. “Which was exactly what he probably would have wanted you to be doing.”  
She shuddered as another gust of wind hit her, and as close as they were, Seraphina couldn’t help but feel it. She rolled over, nearly crushing one of Tooth’s wings, and pulled Tooth close with no preamble, animals slinking out of the darkness of the jungle at her silent order. Tooth went stiff as a jaguar laid its long, warm body out by her spine, aware of the danger as its rumbling purr throbbed through her body. Covered in warm body-heat from various different jungle animals, and fixed by Seraphina’s burning stare, Tooth found herself quickly stopping shivering.  
“Uh,” she said, a little nonplussed and too frightened to move. “Thanks?”  
Seraphina lowered her head until their foreheads touched, intense eyes still staring into Tooth’s, and hummed warmly, somehow matching exactly the frequency of the jaguar’s purr against Tooth’s spine.   
It had been far too long since Tooth had had to deal with nature shenanigans like this for it to feel at all comfortable.  
Had they done cuddle piles often, back then? For once, Tooth was struggling to remember, because Seraphina hadn’t stopped looking at her, and didn’t seem to want to blink any time soon, which was beginning to get quite unnerving.  
“Will make… will make… strong again…” Seraphina said, something like grave promise in her voice. “Will… kick Father… back to seventh hell…”  
Tooth snorted. “I don’t doubt that,” she muttered.   
“Will give… will give wing…” Seraphina blinked at her deeply. “Fly,” she said, earnestly. “Bird… belong… sky. Wing. Better.”  
Hope swelled, incredible and powerful, in Tooth’s chest as her heart skipped a beat. “You’ll give me my wings back?” She pushed aside some annoyed jungle animal to grab at the sharp angles of Seraphina’s face. “You’ll help me fly again? Seraphina-”  
“Yes,” said Seraphina, in that thick voice of hers, “Will need… help… kick Father…” She smiled, and then stated, with ineffable pride, “My… little bird!”  
Tooth found herself smiling at the old nickname, grinning with delight at the prospect of tasting the skies once more. She hugged Seraphina’s face against her own as best as she could, paying no attention to the way Seraphina went slightly stiff in bemusement. “Thank you, thank you,” she whispered gratefully.   
The promise of flight back and revenge against Pitch was just too sweet to doubt. For once, life was looking up.  
And by all the stars in the sky, she hoped Pitch was ready to have his ass kicked so far back into hell he wouldn’t ever be able to find it again. There really was no other fitting revenge in Sandy’s memory.


End file.
